Ali Pasha, Lion of Ioannina

by Eugenia Russell

  Ali was used to double-dealing but his subsequent actions smack more of desperation than strategy as events at Constantinople took a more serious turn. The existence of plague at the capital, where it was never totally under control, gave Ali the excuse to create a cordon sanitaire, with lazarettos on the routes from Epirus to the capital, ostensibly to safeguard his people from its spread, but also as a means of control enabling him to intercept messages or anyone suspected of being sent from the Sultan to obtain his head. To counter the news from his spies that his enemies were turning the Sultan against him he increased his bribes, but his past was catching up with him. He had played fast and loose with his allies too many times. Ismail Pashabey, who had fallen out with Ali, switched his allegiance and fled to Constantinople where he gained a position of some influence with the authorities. In February 1820 Ismail put out a story that Ali had sent agents to murder him on the streets. Three Albanians were found who confessed under interrogation to being assassins and were executed. The whole thing was quite likely staged, but as a result Ali was declared an enemy of the Porte and Ismail was given the pashaliks of Ioannina and Delvino in Ali’s stead. On hearing of this, while continuing his use of bribes, he tried to deflect attention by warning the ministers of the existence of the Filiki Eteria and hoping they would see it as in their interests to keep him in power. Soutsos, who had become a member of the Filiki Eteria, was now using his influence against Ali and used to hearing of Greek conspiracies the Porte ignored him, believing he was the greater danger. Ali responded by turning to the Ottomans’ disaffected subjects, the Montenegrans and Serbs as well as the Greeks. He summoned the klephts to a conference in Preveza, promising arms and booty, and at a further meeting of Greeks and Albanians he offered money and a constitution, having approached Metternich to supply a model. The Greek revolutionaries listened but waited, happy to humour him for the moment. Never one to put all his bets on one play Ali also sought assistance from the British. He tried to persuade Maitland to help him promote an uprising against the Turks, something contrary to their policy. Maitland nevertheless referred the matter home. But when Ali met Maitland’s representative Sir Frederick Hankey in April 1820 at Preveza, he had changed his tune declaring he wanted reconciliation with the Porte. This time he wanted protection from the British Fleet being aware that his flank was exposed to attack by the Turks from the Ionian Sea. The problem gave the confused Maitland a sleepless night. He was worried Ali might turn to Russia if Britain did not help, but Lord Bathurst, the colonial secretary, had given unequivocal instructions, there was no treaty barring Turkish warships from the Ionian Sea and Britain had no right to prevent naval operations by the Porte against the coast of Epirus.

  Ali, of course, had not waited for Britain’s reply but had already turned back to Russia offering more than he offered Britain: if Russia recognized his authority under the tsar he would raise his subjects in revolt against the Sultan and help Russia conquer European Turkey. The Russians gave little but a vague intention of support in the hope Ali might defy the Sultan. Having claimed to be a member of the Filiki Eteria he sought to curry favour with the Greeks and in the process impress the Russians by reduced taxes and cancelling debts and forced labour projects. There was even talk of him converting to Christianity. During May while Maitland awaited instructions he sent Colonel Charles Napier on a secret mission to Ioannina to assess Ali’s military resources. On his own initiative Napier offered his services as military commander if Ali made a bid for Greek support by granting freedom to his Christian subjects, adopted a new military organization, and paid an advance £100,000. Napier reported:

  Ali has desired me to ask the Government’s leave for raising troops in England, and my proposal was to assemble 8,000 troops at Parga before February next, if he can maintain the contest for this summer. With these he might incorporate twenty-thousand Greeks; in a month I could make them all fit to take the field and attack the Turks in their winter quarters… England may make him an independent sovereign, not only of Albania, but all Greece, from Morea to Macedon. She can determine his frontier at her will, and by compelling him to accept a constitution favourable to the Greeks, she would form of those people a vigorous nation… The Greeks look to England for their emancipation. But if ever England engages in war with Russia to support the Turks, the Greeks will consider her as trying to rivet their chains and will join with the Russians.

  The plan was too ambitious for either the British Government or Ali to take up. Ali was an opportunist but not a gambler and the stakes were too high. He was no longer a young man and the limits of his ambition and power were becoming clear. He had depended on Turkey for his power base, through defeating his enemies he had also kept in with the Sultan and without the support of one of the major powers he did not possess sufficient resources.

  In July the Sublime Porte sent Ali an ultimatum. He was ordered to present himself within forty days to justify himself. Ali would have known it would be a risk to go, so he failed to turn up, but his insubordination played into the Sultan’s hands by giving him a convenient excuse to use force against him. Ismail Pashabey was given the task of assembling a large army of regular troops under the pashas of Scutari and Larissa, the latter no longer a bulwark of Veli’s protecting Ali’s eastern flank. The combined force may have been chaotic but it was to prove effective. Finlay writes:

  The Othoman army was slowly collected, and it formed a motley assembly, without order, without artillery. Each pasha moved forward as he mustered his followers, with a separate commissar and a separate military chest. The daily rations and daily pay of the soldier differed in different divisions of the army. Ismael was really only the nominal commander-in-chief. He was not a soldier, and had he been an experienced officer, he could have done little to enforce order on the forces he commanded.

  Ali was prepared. He had managed to swell the ranks of his army with volunteers persuaded to make common cause, but he was not going to take on the Sultan’s army in open battle, preferring to fall back on defensible positions in the mountain passes. Omar Vrionis and 15,000 men were stationed at Metsovo to defend the approach from Larissa across the Pindus, while to the south-east Odysseus Androutsos held the mountain passes around Livadia, and to the north Mukhtar at Berat and his second son Hussain at Tepelene faced up against the pasha of Scutari, Mustafa Bushatli, son of Kara Mahmud Pasha. To the south Preveza, the key against attack from the sea, was held by Veli who had been driven out of Lepanto and Parga was under his son Mehmed. Ali himself remained at Ioannina with a garrison of around 8,000 men. For the first time in years and at the age of around 70, Ali was on the defensive and facing a large coordinated attack from all sides. The Ottoman Army advanced in a pincer from the south reaching the western coast. Here they joined the Turkish naval expedition from Constantinople consisting of three line-of-battle ships, five frigates and about twenty brigs, joined by squadrons from Algeria and Egypt. The Arab crews were more efficient; they had destroyed a Greek Fleet in the harbour of Galaxidhi on the north shore of the Gulf of Corinth. Control of the sea meant that Spyros Kolovos,9 one of Ali’s secretaries and intermediaries, was taken by the Turks while trying to obtain ammunition from Corfu, and tortured to death. If Ali’s troops had remained loyal he may have tested the Porte’s resolve as had happened on numerous previous occasions. As the strength of the opposition became clear even the loyalty of Ali’s sons wavered. Faced with the choice of inheriting a share of their father’s domain in permanent opposition to the Sultan or making peace each decided the best course was the latter, and with promises of pardons or another pashalik somewhere, they abandoned their positions. In the north Mukhtar surrendered Berat and Argyrocastro fell with Selim taken. The Turks used bribes to undermine Ali’s troops and the Suliotes were invited from Corfu to take their homeland back. With their help the imperial force took Preveza from Veli, but they found Ali’s fort of Kiafa a tougher proposition. Only Hussein Bey swore to die for his grandfather. As the Turks closed in Napier paid
him a second visit at Ioannina, imploring him to spend money on his fortifications and on reorganizing his military force, but Ali was loathe to part with his money. Only when Ali’s Odysseus Androutsos retreated from Thermopylae, and Omer Vrionis deserted to the Ottomans and his 15,000 men disappeared, and it was too late, did Ali make an offer of £2m to Napier to improve his defences. He was now slowly being surrounded at Ioannina as the 25,000-strong Turkish Army settled down for a protracted siege.

  With winter, the discipline of the Ottoman Army, which was already suspect, deteriorated. Supplies were hard to come by and the country round Ioannina was mercilessly ravaged. In the words of an eyewitness the troops were ‘raiding cities, townships and villages without the slightest restraint and stealing their last morsel of food from the mouths of poor Greeks’. Both sides employed Albanian mercenaries and Greeks, and their loyalty was prone to waver. With the devastation many of the Greeks turned back to Ali. His spies learnt that the presence of the Suliotes had caused a rift in the imperial force, with the local beys and agas threatening to desert. After the Suliots’ failure to take Kiafa they were withdrawn from the main body of troops outside Ioannina and stationed in the most exposed positions and given little support when attacked. In consequence in December they opened negotiations with Ali, and left the Turkish camp for Suli, where Ali’s commander at Kiafa handed over the fortress. In a strange reversal of fortune by January 1821 they were allied to Ali who had restored them to their homes and promised to provide money for their families in exile. Attempts by the Turks to try to win back their allegiance through the Greek metropolitan of Arta failed. With Ismail proving ineffective as commander of such a large force, the Sultan replaced him with the experienced Hurshid Pasha, who had taken over as governor of the Morea in November 1820. Hurshid had served as grand vizier and suppressed the revolts in Serbia. Energetic and capable he set about reorganizing the army. By now both sides were suffering from defections and the situation amongst the Turks was so bad that Hurshid felt compelled to stay in the camp. Ali on the other hand was not content to just sit and wait but when he was tricked into making a sortie on 7 February he was severely defeated. Hurshid on the other hand was frustrated by his Albanian troops who wanted to prolong the campaign so they could continue drawing pay.

  Alexandros Ypsilantis, the son of Constantine, a colonel in the Russian Army had taken over as leader of the Filiki Eteria. Apprised of the situation in Epirus he decided to use Ali as a diversion in a bid for Greek independence. He sent orders to Kolokotronis to encourage the klephts to join with the Suliotes, instructing them that any towns and fortresses taken from the Turks should be garrisoned by persons ready to declare for the Greek rebellion. In marching north to join the campaign Hurshid had weakened the Morea and when Mehmed Salik, the acting governor, announced that on top of the impositions already made to finance the war against Ali, a doubling of the herach, or poll tax, the situation was ripe for revolt. In February 1821 Ypsilantis moved an army made up of many Greeks in Russian service and Epirotes of Zagori into Wallachia, where Soutsos had become hospodar, in the hope of inciting a pan-Balkan revolution with Russian support. The Turks began to get jittery and in March they ordered the metropolitan bishops of the Peloponnese to go to Tripolitsa to confer on the subject of Ali’s intrigues. The Turks still feared him more than a Greek uprising and wanted to nullify his bids for Greek support. They planned to hold the leading Greeks hostage, but the Greeks suspected the worst and made their excuses, stalling for time. By March, in response to Ypsilantis’ move, the Peloponnese was in revolt but initially the Turks were still more worried about Ali than the situation in the Morea. The Sultan supported the policy of his grand vizier, Halet Effendi, who by ignoring the Greeks allowed them to consolidate. Halet’s main concern was to discourage Muslims, and particularly Ali’s Albanians, from cooperating with Christian klephts. On hearing of the Greek revolt, Ali sent Alexis Noutsos, who had commanded a force against Ismail in Zagori, on a mission to his compatriots to suggest a collaboration with the view to establishing an Albanian-Greek state under Ali’s sovereignty. Ali’s moves were coming too late to allay Greek suspicions and the momentum was already under way. Noutsos did not return. He joined the Greek leader Alexander Mavrokordatos at Missolonghi and the revolution.

  Hurshid Pasha was now fighting a war on two fronts. While besieging Ali he had the Greeks biting at his heels to the south. In September at Peta near Arta, the Greek chiefs formed an alliance with the Suliotes and their Albanian allies to help Ali on condition that they got the freedom of the villages he had converted to chifliks under his direct control. Mavrokordatos who was still afraid that Ali might come to some arrangement with the Turks, persuaded Markos Botsaris, the Suliote leader, to desert the cause of Ali and to throw in his lot with the Greek chieftains besieging Arta. His brother Kostas Botsaris, a veteran of Les Chasseurs on the Ionian Islands and member of the Filiki Eteria, was already fighting for the cause. The Turks meanwhile tried to split the Greeks and Albanians. Ali’s one-time ally and trusted general, Omar Vrionis, was sent to relieve Arta. He told the Albanians that Ali was at the end of his tether, and that the cunning Greeks were only fighting on their own account. When the Albanians found out that the Greeks lacked arms and ammunition and were destroying mosques, they deserted the Suliots and joined Omar. Meanwhile the Suliots slipped off home to Suli. By October the war of attrition had taken its toll and starved of supplies Ali burnt the town retreating to his last stronghold, the citadel of Itch-kalé on the promontory in the lake in Ioannina, where he shut himself up with the remnants of his harem and a small nervous garrison. He was described as living in a bombproof cellar, deserted by most of his sycophants, wrapped in a bundle of embroidered garments.

  After a winter of stalemate the Turks broke into the citadel in January to find only 100 defenders left. Ali had retreated to his last and strongest tower, where his treasure and powder magazine were kept, threatening to blow himself up. Ali was prepared to play his last hand. He still had a vast treasure, although much reduced, and he was prepared to bargain with Hurshid who wanted to ensure that the treasure was not lost in any last-minute futile battle but retained for himself and the Sultan. Ali suggested a truce so he could belatedly put his case to the Sultan. Hurshid was prepared to agree if Ali signed an armistice, surrendered the fortress and retired to the little monastery of Agios Panteleimon on the island in the lake, while Hurshid applied to the Sultan for a pardon. Ali accepted, probably thinking he could convince the Sultan that he was still needed to fight the Greeks. Taking Vassiliki and his private guard Ali retired to the island to await the answer, supplied with delicacies and musicians by Hurshid. Once Hurshid had obtained access to the treasure, Ali was left with no bargaining position. Whether he was under orders that Ali should die or he was actually awaiting the Sultan’s decree is uncertain. As with much in Ali’s life, even the manner of his death is one of confusion and elaboration. On 5 February, Hurshid sent troops to Ali with instructions either to arrest him or to kill him; the accounts differ. Ali expected them to be delivering the pardon and in the simplest version, when the arresting officers entered the room and demanded his head for the Sultan, he opened fire on them. In the ensuing fight he killed two and wounded another before being shot through the heart. Another account portrays a more devious strategy on the part of the officer in charge. After some discussion with Ali in an upper room they left together and went out on the balcony. Ali made a low bow, and as he was off his guard the officer stabbed him in the heart, declaring ‘Ali is dead’. Ali either died then and there or, in the manner of a horror movie, not having suffered the mortal blow he came back to life and crawled back into the room. The Turks, afraid to take him on, shot at him through the wooden floor, killing him. Another version has it that when the officer arrived with the document accompanied by troops, Ali realized it was not a pardon. Both sides opened fire, and after a confused struggle during which Ali was wounded, he took refuge in the upstairs room. The fatal blow
was a shot fired up through the floorboards, wounding him in the groin. Finlay had not heard this version until he visited the monastery thirty years later and this is the one widely told today. Whatever the manner of his death, Ali’s head was cut off, perhaps on a stone step outside, and shown to the remaining Albanian troops, who after a token show of resistance surrendered when they were promised their arrears in wages, whereupon they cheered loudly, ‘The dog Ali is dead. Long live the Sultan.’ Ali’s head was then sent to the Sultan, the skin peeled off for transportation in the usual manner to be stuffed with straw and moistened for presentation. It was then exhibited on the gates of the Sultan’s palace with the heads of his three sons and grandson, in the same way as the heads Ali himself had sent to the Sultan for his pleasure.

  Ali’s head may have gone to Constantinople but his body remained in Ioannina where he was buried with his first wife, Emine, in the citadel. Vassiliki was more fortunate. She was sent to the Ottoman capital, but alive as a prisoner. In 1830 she received a pardon and the newly independent Greek state, remembering her support for Greek liberty, gave her a medieval tower in Katochi, near Missolonghi, where she lived until her death in 1834. It was a Greek state that did not include Epirus. Ali’s army and Ioannina had fallen into the hands of the Sultan and all of Epirus would not taste freedom until 1913.

  Every year of Ali’s life was spent in bloodshed and war. In mid-nineteenth century Europe his memory was synonymous with cruelty and despotism while it was acknowledged that some of his countrymen viewed him as a model governor. Summing up his life, the count-duke of Sorgo, a senator in the Dalmatian Republic of Ragusa who knew Ali personally, said that his system of government was fit for the country over which he ruled and no European would have brought Albania to the flourishing state it enjoyed during the last twenty years of his life. But in the words of Ismail Kemal Bey, the first head of state of Albania, there was a sense of wasted opportunity when he referred to the Greeks’ insurrection: